Monday, May 30, 2005

Memorable

So here’s the thing: I didn’t have much planned for this weekend.  I’d intended to take off last weekend, but that didn’t happen, so instead I just ignored the whole Memorial Day thing and figured it’d work out on its own.  And, as the Eurosages predicted, damn straight it did. 

Friday night I finally got around to seeing Ray, which I really enjoyed.  One thing I wish they’d done, though, is to have found some less common variations of the music they used - I knew so much of the score note-for-note that I had trouble believing that Foxx, who I must say was very impressive, was actually creating it - the music, much as I loved it, played against the dramatic performance rather than in support of it, I thought.  But anyway.  Good flick. 

Then on Saturday we went to Cornerstone Gardens with Dave and Kim and Daisy and Kaleb, and we all had a blast.  I recommend it wholeheartedly, especially to families with small kids.  Afterwards we had another scrumptious tasting at Cline, a longtime favorite of mine though apparently Dave hadn’t really spent much time there before (the watergardens were particularly gorgeous, with fountains and cascades and acres of lilies and irises; Daisy kept saying it was like Alice in Wonderland, which I rather liked).  Finally, we returned to Dave and Kim’s place for very tasty indian take-out supper, a bottle of Meeker (what?  damn! zin?  carignagne?  it was red.  i know it was red) and a clearly recollected and truly splendid bottle of Silver Oak ‘96 cab; then we had a screening of Sucker Free City, which I thoroughly enjoyed and keep thinking about.  It’s an unoptioned pilot, so it leaves a lot of questions expressly open, but I thought it worked really well - effective as well as entertaining. 

Sunday was a domestic day: I cleaned out the back study, starting with the top of the desk and working down through the file cabinet, then into the closet by cleaning out the random junk, and then the shelves, and finally the floors, even moving out the giant bulky stuff that just disappears when you don’t really look for it.... It took all day and I have a resounding feeling of satisfaction for having done it.  One more piece of the pie lifted off the floor to which it’s fallen, brushed perfunctorily, and replaced whence it belongs.  I’m not excited about the reams of old paperwork I need to shred now, but I’m back down to fighting weight and fitness.  The great thing is, of course, once the whole room is really well cleaned, it never gets dirty again, right? 

Monday started with yoga: we drove over the bridge to Sausalito’s lovely bayfront park where we met Nina, who teaches our Tuesday night class; she’d invited seven or eight of her students for a morning stretch.  We laid out mats and did about 90 minutes of serious work, including some handstands, some back bends, some cool partnered isometrics that pushed the pose into your bones, and sundry other suchlike.  Working outside in warm breezes by the gently lapping bayside, the sun on my face and the moon still showing above the mountains behind my shoulder, my body supported by the forgiving turf and by the goodwill of the strangers who are working alongside me, my face occasionally pressing into the grass where I am overwhelmed by the clean sent of the earth, and then I raise up into a backbend and am lost and dizzy staring into the featureless blueplate sky.... it was a really fulfilling session, in no small measure because Nina does such a fabulous job of inspiring and coaxing and expecting the most from each of us, that we all got a deep and complete workout no matter our level of expertise.  Then afterwards we went out for breakfast with her and with two of the others who’d come, locals who go a long way back with Nina, I think; they were very cool people and we ate a very tasty and satisfying breakfast in Sausalito, which is a fun little town if you get away from funnelcake row.  I was particularly impressed with how many people knew Nina; she was all plugged into the scene everywhere we went.  It didn’t surprise me but it was fun to see it happening. 

We came home and took a vigorous 20 minute nap, then roused ourselves and pulled it together to go to Jon and Lisa’s traditional grillfest for Memorial Day.  It was an intimate but enthusiastic gathering, and the grilled salmon and scallops were excellent; Heidi brought a cake that was a big flat disk about 15” in diameter, with a raised disk in the center about eight inches in diameter, with a raised star in the center of that.  Each layer was about 1.5 inches.  Altogether the damn thing had its own gravity field.  And it was chocolicious to boot.  Because Brian and Sha were not present, I was impressed into duty as the protouncle pummulus: the good friend on whom all the small children unleash their most destructive impulses.  I was slapped and punched and kicked, climbed upon and over, pinched and pulled and had my hat stolen.  I tell ya, those kids.  I love each one of them, and was deeply honored that they allowed me to play that role.  It was an absolute pleasure to get my nards headbutted by a four-year-old.  Of course, all things have their limits and we left in the early evening, the kids still screaming with laughter at each other and Jon glumly hosing out the mud-encrusted wading pool as Kel and I drove home for a night of gentle re-entry into the work world after a three-day weekend that I think we really got the most out of. 

And that doesn’t even get into the good stuff.  But that’s for another place and time. 

TO CONCLUDE: Here are a number of photos I took at Cornerstone.  Look, but don’t touch.  That’s how they get DNA samples, man. 

The front plaza at Cornerstone was decorated with young trees planted in beds of purple glass.  No, really - it looked like this:

This was a garden dedicated to screen doors and Johnny Cash.  It’s not your citified garden, now, nor your countrified garden - it’s a warren of screen doors that impart a curiously peaceful feeling when you pass among them, “Ring of Fire” playing in a sometimes stammering or overlaid loop in the background.  Well anyway we thought it was cool.  Here’s Daisy enjoying it.

Another garden was a carpeted hillscape, domes and valleys and cirques and canyons all smoothly upholstered for naked feet to wander among.  Before you wandered into this vale of moguls, you sat at a bench and took off your shoes.  The bench was set into a narrow verge at the front edge of the garden, and it was lined with coconut shells - JUST LIKE THESE ONES:

This garden was the pits.  Regardless, I rather liked it.  There’s a rectangular pool at the bottom with little fish swimming around in it.  I think it creeped out Dave.

In this garden, we followed curving paths laid out with red bamboo poles on a ground that faded from black at the edges to white in the center, where, on a pedastal, stood a small black pool in which the words of Francis Bacon (not francis bacon) floated.  Yes, I know it sounds weird.

The “Garden Party” garden was just like a typical game of giant rope balls, except this one was freestyle.  Yow!

Then there’s the blue tree.  It speaks for itself.  (cf Truffulas.)

One of the gardens has a cool tunnel.  It’s short and simple, but it’s a lot of fun to be inside of, whether or not you’re with a two-year-old who has just discovered the falsetto range. 

This garden honors migrant workers and it’s phenomenal.  This is just a small piece of it; much more of this garden is worth visiting but can’t be seen or even suspected from here.  I thought that was particularly ingenious. 

This garden is a space that seems lifted out of time, lined with screens of eucalyptus leaves and other chairs and long paths leading to wide calm pools at which these two chairs sit in tended beds of pebbles, so restful that they defy people to sit on them. 

This is a border of nearly 500 pinwheels.  I think I should have gotten up higher for this shot, but what are you going to do.  IT’S A GODDAMN FREE WEBSITE.  Really.  People. 

This structure stands in a garden of long green boardwalks, very restful and peaceful, and from it hangs a draping curtain, and inside dangle threads of fishing line, and people write messages on small blue plastic disks and attach them to the threads and they spin and reflect and transmit light onto a sand floor.  It was totally unexpected and very effective.  Everybody walked out smiling. 

There were also a cafe and a few high-end shoppes there.  One of the shoppes is called Artefact, and it had some really cool stuff, like european town-hall clockfaces turned to rust, and aging gazebos in new orleans wrought iron, and old iron urns with wild colors showing through the paint.  Here’s a few items I particularly liked: 

And that’s all I’ve got for Memorial Day, 2005.  See you back here in one short year and let’s see how I measure up!